Ratt’s Stephen Pearcy Announces New Solo Album

Ratt singer Stephen Pearcy revealed that his fifth solo album, titled View to a Thrill, will be released later this year.

“The new record is finished, now going to mix master mode with Matt Thorne and [guitarist] Erik Ferentinos,” Pearcy recently said on Facebook, adding that the record was produced by himself and Matt Thorne.

Pearcy’s most recent release was last year’s Smash. “We’d already written or co-written probably 15 songs, if not more," he told Guitar World in January 2017. "We were getting ready to go in there and then the Frontiers [Records] thing happened, and I said, ‘Gentlemen, we’re starting from scratch. But we’re gonna keep one song – ‘I Can’t Take It’ – because that’s gonna be our schematic for how we’re going to approach this. And it just so happens that in ‘I Can’t Take It,’ I mention a couple of times the word ‘smash.’ And it started sticking with me. So I said, 'And guess what? The record’s called Smash!'”

The singer noted that he's been working with Ferentinos for 14 years. "What he brings to the table is he’s like Warren [DeMartini], in the respect that when Warren joined Ratt, he just grew by leaps and bounds every year," Pearcy explained. "Like, ‘Holy shit – this is crazy!’ And Erik is like some kind of alien to me. He writes the most insane stuff, and he knows right where I’m going. He knows exactly what I like, what I can sink my teeth into. He’s just leaping-and-bounding every day.”

Ratt’s current status is in doubt after ex-drummer Bobby Blotzer fueled rumors that both DeMartini and fellow guitarist Carlos Cavazo had been fired. Despite the acrimony generated by a legal dispute over the band's name, Blotzer said he hoped they could reunite in the future.